On the uniqueness of the unital divisor of a matrix polynomial over an arbitrary field

Abstract

Let P be an arbitrary field and let P(x) be a ring of polynomials over P. Denote by Pn and Pn (x) the rings of n xn matrices over P and P(x), respectively. Consider a nonsingular polynomial matrix A(x) e P~ (x) (detA(x) $ 0) and represent it as a matrix polynomial over the field P: is a unital matrix polynomial. In this paper, we establish conditions under which a unital divisor D (x) extracted from the matrix polynomial A (x) is determined uniquely by its characteristic polynomial detA (x) = d(x). The re- sult obtained enables one to indicate the class of matrix polynomials for which this unital divisor is unique for a given characteristic polynomial. We also show how this result can be used when solving matrix polynomial equations. The uniqueness of a tmital divisor for a matrix polynomial over an algebraically closed field with char- acteristic zero was studied in ( 1 ). It is known (2) that, for a matrix A (x) e Pn (x), there exist matrices U(x), V(x) ~ GL n (Pn (x)) such that U (x)A (x) V(x) = F A (X) = diag (al(x), a2(x) ..... an(x)), where aj(x) e P(x), j= 1, 2 ..... n, are unital polynomials and ai(x ) (ai+l(x), i = 1, 2 ..... n - 1. The matrix FA(X ) is called a canonical diagonal form of the matrix A(x). It is also known that if a matrix is nonsingular, then it can be reduced to the normal Hermite form by right elementary transformations, i.e., for the matrix A (x), there exists a matrix W(x) e GLn (P(x)) such that